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“Durban Platform for Enhanced Action”

After two weeks of talks delegates agreed to start work next year on a new legally binding treaty to cut greenhouse gases, expected to be decided by 2015 and come into force by 2020. Some however said that the action plan was not aggressive enough to slow the pace of global warming.Small island states and developing nations at risk claimed the deal marked the lowest common denominator possible and lacked the ambition needed to ensure their survival.Agreement on the package avoided a collapse of the talks and spared the blushes of host South Africa, whose stewardship of the two weeks of often fractious negotiations came under fire from rich and poor nations.“The Durban Platform for Enhanced Action” would "develop a new protocol, another legal instrument or agreed outcome with legal force" that would be applicable under the UN climate convention. That phrasing, agreed at a last-ditch huddle in the conference centre between the European Union, India, China and the United States, was used by all parties to claim victory.Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South African Foreign Minister, said that they came “with plan A” and they have concluded the meeting “with plan A to save one planet for the future of our children and our grandchildren to come". "We have made history," she concluded.